


The Pride of Little My

by econator



Category: Formula E RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Drug Use, Gen, Helsinki Pride 2019, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Inspired by Mumintroll | Moomins, M/M, Microdosing Psychedelics, Opium, Overdose, Suicide Attempt, biohacking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-09 18:44:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20123101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/econator/pseuds/econator
Summary: Daniel undertakes a fool's errand, going back in time to try score points with his lab supervisor, Lucas. He gets way more than he bargained for on his trip back through time.





	The Pride of Little My

**Author's Note:**

> CW: suicide, opium use, overdose, dead lesbian trope
> 
> If you trust me to take you through the messy middle, it comes to a happy ending. This was partly inspired by every creative I know having at least one "my work isn't worth it" moment this year, and wanting to affirm that the world needs more art, more story, more hope.

Daniel smoothed his hair in the cloudy mirror of the hallway. He made a mental note to dress in '50s fashion more often in a bid to make his boss see him as something more than a student. He worked in an insanely cool lab with an insanely sexy supervisor. Even if he never got to tame his boss' fat trouser snake. The one he'd seen wake up every time they did something cool, like get the time travel portal controllers to work for the first time. Daniel refocussed on the task, and climbed the stairs to the apartment number written on his historically accurate notepad. He knocked on the door. He bounced on the balls of his feet, nervous about delivering the script he'd come up with as a cover for “Hi, I'm a time-travelling grad student whose unbelievably hot supervisor seems to be permanently hopped up on weird vitamin supplements and microdoses of shrooms. Can I just take you to the twenty-first century to read your book to his son as a bedtime story? I'll bring you right back. It's just that he has everything, and is always chasing new experiences.” It was a weird collection of sentences at the best of times, and felt doubly surreal in Swedish that he'd binge-learned on Duolingo in the mad scientist supervisor's sensory deprivation tank, hopped up on the aforementioned cocktail of chemicals, all in the name of being the one student who broke his seemingly lifelong “I don't hook up with anyone below full prof” trend. An angular woman opened the door after an unreasonable amount of knocking. She looked like the pictures he'd found online of the reclusive author-illustrator.

'Hello?' she said.

Daniel cleared his throat. 'Hello, I was wondering if you had a moment to talk about the Pride Alliance. We're working on decriminalisation.'

'I wasn't expecting visitors,' she said flatly, closing the door in his face.

Daniel jammed the toe of his Vans into the crack just in time. Why did lesbians always have to be so goddamn difficult to talk into mad schemes? Or was she bisexual? He should ask her about her labels. Fuck, did she think he was a spy? In all the styling detail and trippy language work, he had forgotten to look up Finland's position in the Cold War, sure he'd be able to bullshit his way through. He pressed his face against the crack in the door.

'I'm a time-travelling grad student from 2019 whose unbelievably hot thesis supervisor seems to be permanently hopped up on weird vitamin supplements and microdoses of magic mushrooms. Can I just take you to the twenty-first century to read your book to his son as a bedtime story so I can score points with him and maybe be the one who finally seduces him? I'll bring you right back to this moment. You literally won't lose a minute of your life. It's just that he has everything, and is always chasing new experiences.'

The door opened just far enough for Tove's face to be visible through the crack. 'Go visit the next dreamer. Leave me alone.'

'It's the truth. Humanity took a weird turn in the seventies after someone invented neoliberalism, and now we have privately funded off-grid labs working on obscure shit like time travel and immortality. I'm in the time travel lab, and I've come to take you for a visit so I can score with Lucas.'

Tove opened the door. 'You're a strange angel, but I'll play to your script. Here's my confession: I haven't written or painted in months. I've decided to quit. There's no point to my work, my life, any of it. You've wasted whatever fuel your time machine uses, because I'm not going anywhere, but thank you for coming to take my confession.' She stroked his cheek. 'Strange angel,' she said in a sing-song voice

'Oh, believe me, I'm no angel. Our whole lab is powered by solar cells that use a variety of quantum states to capture UV rays like plants do. We have 97.8% efficiency most of the time, even in cloudy conditions. I haven't wasted anything.' He looked at her. 'The fuck are you on, and can I get some?'

Tove hugged Daniel before she sat in her chair and drained the dregs of her coffee, shuddering. 'Bitter,' she said to herself. She turned to Daniel. 'Then you're wasting your life, my time-travelling confessor, coming to fetch an old basket case to read pointless stories to a child in the hope of making love to his father.'

'No, no. Not making love. I'd settle for sucking him off in his office.'

Tove eyed Daniel blearily. 'You were right when you said the world took a weird turn. Good thing I won't be around for it. Please close the door on your way out. You don't want to be around for the next part.' With that, she picked up a plastic wastepaper bin, set it firmly in her lap, and waved him away.

Daniel's mind ticked over as he stared at the back of her dishevelled head. Something didn't seem right. The summer of 1955 was Tove Jansson's personal renaissance. She met a lady, and they built an attic corridor between their apartments, and got a summer island retreat, and lived happily ever after. No, wait, that was the autumn and winter. The summer was her depression, which would explain why she looked so rough. Daniel turned to leave, despite the nagging feeling in his gut. Better to leave her in peace to do whatever crazy shit artists were into in Helsinki in the fifties. Maybe he did need bigger goals than performing favours for his boss in the hope of it turning sexual? Even if his boss was a physics genius, who kite-surfed to keep his mind-body connection sharp, and his golden-brown skin permanently smelled of salt as a result. Daniel heard Tove wretch behind him. Poppy seed tea, probably, if she was complaining about bitterness while rambling about dreaming. He decided to look around while she was passed out, just to see if she had any extra lying around. He could use feeling like his soul was being rubbed down with silk, since he clearly wasn't going to get his dick rubbed down any time soon. He sniffed her cup, shuddering.

'Holy shit, lady. You're dosing hard for a Tuesday afternoon. I guess you're into opium tincture rather than seedpods.' He looked at her as she threw up again, this time fully passed out. Her head rolled back, making her choke on the vomit. Daniel swiped the chunk out her throat and into the bucket with his fingers, shifting her into recovery position to ride out her high safely. He straightened and looked around for her stash, losing hope that he'd at least get free poppy seeds out of the trip. He saw a small bottle on the counter, sitting on a receipt and a folded-up paper bag. He walked over to it. Empty. He looked at the receipts. 'Wow, you got 30mL of 20% opium tincture this morning, and you've punished the lot? You have some tolerance!' He gently bumped her slack knuckles with his fist as his mind did its usual estimation of body weight and dosage to see where his personal best ranked in comparison. 'Also, the drug laws in this time period are really lax. I should come back here more often.' As he finished speaking, the realisation dawned that she'd taken a fatal dose, probably most of it before he knocked on her door. Whatever Lucas might say about him fucking up the timeline for personal gain, this definitely wasn't how Tove Jansson died. 'Okay, come with me. We're going to sick bay for some blockers.' He wound her arm around his shoulders, picked her up, and pressed the portal button on his watch.

'Daniel, great, you're back,' Lucas said as he stepped into the lab. 'Have you finished that field wrinkle model I asked you for a month ago? I could really use those results right about now.'

'Not yet. I'll work on it when I'm done saving Moomin from certain ignominy.' He walked out the lab, hoping that Lucas' brilliant mind was too focussed on whatever unsolvable equation he'd been obsessing over lately. His heart sank when he heard footsteps follow him out the lab.

'What do you mean saving Moomin? Who is this?' Lucas brushed Tove's hair out her face.

'Tove Jansson. I went back to 1955 to ask her if she'd read Leo a bedtime story, and interrupted her overdosing on opium tincture. I'm just taking her to sick bay.'

'1955? She's not supposed to die until the nineties.' Lucas sounded concerned. Which, ultimately, was great for Daniel, because concern didn't usually result in the kind of yelled lecture that left Daniel wondering why he still worked here. Other than Lucas' insane hotness, and the lab full of fun toys he could never afford on his own.

'I know,' Daniel said. 'She's supposed to meet a nice lady in a few months' time, and have a creative renaissance. Which is why I figured you'd be okay with me fucking up the timeline, bringing her to the future for treatment.'

'Yeah, saving the timeline, whatever,' he said, pulling his phone out his pocket and dialling. 'I think we have bigger issues than lab ethics right now, but we'll circle back to that. What dose of naloxone should sick bay be prepping?'

Daniel recited a breakdown of his mental calculations into the phone Lucas was holding in front of his mouth as Lucas checked her axial pulse. He dropped her wrist and pressed his fingers against her carotid.

'Pulse is very weak, but there,' Lucas said into his phone as they approached the facility's sick bay. He squeezed Tove's limp hand. 'Hang in there, Little My. We'll get you back.'

Then Lucas was all action in a way that would have turned Daniel on in different circumstances. He burst through the double doors Aragorn style, giving clear, calm commands that Daniel would have followed, if he hadn't flunked out of medical school. Thankfully, the facility's team could handle Tove. Daniel retreated and perched on a stool in a corner near the nurses' station, feeling suddenly tense and anxious. He beat himself up about being such a drug-seeker that he had literally stepped over a dying woman to try find a free score. Maybe she'd been right and he needed to make a life for himself outside of work. Outside of his pathetic, desperate crush on Lucas.

'How're you doing?' Lucas squeezed his shoulder, startling Daniel out of his dark thoughts. He raised his eyebrows at his boss and gestured the closed curtain further down the row, assuming that's where Tove was. 'She's stable. Sleeping it off.' He picked up and squeezed Daniel's hand. 'Well done for acting as fast and responsibly as you did. Five more minutes, and I wouldn't have Moomin in Portuguese to read to my son at night.'

Daniel wrapped his arms around Lucas' waist, burying his face in the salt-scented t-shirt to stave off the regret that he could've bought the medical team more time if he'd been less self-involved and acting like a proper junkie. 'I love you. I just want you to know that. Life is short.' Daniel closed his mouth before more inconvenient truths could escape.

Lucas rubbed his back. 'I know. C'mon. We're going to get dinner.' He wrapped a protective arm around him, and ushered him through the now-empty facility to his luxury electric sports car, no doubt it was juiced, like its owner.

Daniel was grateful that “dinner” turned out to be mushroom ravioli prepared from scratch, vegan-style, by Lucas in his industrial home kitchen, while Daniel sipped a green juice that tasted like it had been enhanced with something to lift his mood. Which is to say that it tasted shit, but he was desperately hoping for a Lucas-style mood buzz to take the edge off the shitty feeling settling in the corners of his mind. Not even casual chat about quantum field theory was enough to distract him from it, and it would probably only grow when he was alone again tonight. Lucas put two plates down on the breakfast bar in front of them, folded his hands while mumbling something in Portuguese that, to be honest, Daniel couldn't be bothered to translate, and crossed himself. Weird gratitude ritual, but okay. It's not like their entire lives weren't next-level surreal anyway. Lucas patted Daniel's hand.

'What's eating you?'

Daniel looked from his food to Lucas, reminded that he got them all into this mess because he wanted Lucas to be eating him. 'You wanna know why I was there?'

'Some grand romantic gesture to get me into bed for a one-night stand?' Lucas said before shovelling a forkful of ravioli into his mouth.

Daniel snorted. 'Am I so predictable?'

Lucas sat back in his chair, folding his hands over his flat abs as he chewed and swallowed. 'It's me more than it is you. I'm in shit with the facility's management for letting my lab run wild, creating wrinkles and anomalies all over the space-time field. Some of them are bleeding through into neighbouring universes, and causing crossovers. This is just one more event that proves how bad I am at managing people.'

'Fuck. Sorry. I hadn't thought about it like that.'

'It's me. I've been off my game since Bianca took Leo and moved out. I stopped trying to keep my eye on all the moving parts in the lab, and you've just been acting like any geek would if they were left alone in a toy store full of time machines.'

'Bianca moved out?! I'm so sorry.'

Lucal sighed. 'Yeah, well. Shit happens when you're chasing it.' He pushed is ravioli around his plate. 'Bullshit, I mean. Chasing bullshit.'

'Sorry?' Daniel said around a mouthful, his mind struggling to keep up with the myriad direction changes in their conversation.

'When you chase bullshit, you end up with it all over you.'

'Are you calling our lab, our work...bullshit?' Daniel felt incredulous that his boss could be so derisive of their combined life's work.

Lucas sighed. 'What else would you call fucking around with time travel for curiosity's sake, just to take up the slack in some billionaire CEO's R&D budget, when there are real problems in the world? Hunger, for example. Or poverty. Or fucking global warming that, even if we don't create enough wrinkles in the fabric of space-time to pull it all apart, could – very likely will – kill us all. What is time travel in relation to that?'

Daniel snorted. 'Have you been talking to Tove about her depressed-as-fuck meaning-of-life shit?'

'What do you mean?'

'Just before she tried to top herself, she told me I was wasting my life, time-travelling to fetch her for a bedtime story so I could be the first grad student in the history of our lab to hook up with you.'

Lucas reached out and took Daniel's hand across the breakfast island. 'Well, were you doing it for love, or for your dick, or your ego, or whatever else is in that exceptionally beautiful mind of yours?'

Daniel's belly tingled as he looked up at Lucas under his eyelashes. 'You think my mind is exceptionally beautiful?'

'Yes. Now answer the question. Why were you in Helsinki in 1955 with no thought of the consequences on the timeline? Granted, you were saving a woman from herself, which, I guess, is a feminist issue we'll deal with another time. But why? For love or ego or horniness?'

Daniel didn't really want to admit the truth. At least, not to the man whose smile could reduce his insides to goo. The man who could inspire a million daydreams of taking baby Leo to the park together in his stroller, walking hand-in-hand, sharing cheap street food and kissing away dribbles of sweet chilli sauce. Lucas rubbed Daniel's forefinger with his thumb. It would be easier to tell him he just wanted to suck his cock, and pretend that he meant nothing more than just an academic supervisor.

'You have that look on your face.'

'What look?' Daniel said, keeping his voice resolutely light and playful, maybe even a bit cheeky.

'I don't know what to call it. Every now and then, I catch you looking at me like that in the lab. When you think I'm not paying attention, usually when you see me climbing out the sensory deprivation tank, or when you're in the lab while I take my high performance supplements, you look at me like that.'

Daniel interlaced their fingers. 'You mean when you seem vulnerable enough that it gives me hope I can take care of you sometime?'

Lucas gently squeezed Daniel's fingers between his own. 'That's as close as to an explicit declaration of love as I'm going to get out of you, isn't it?'

'For now, yes.'

Lucas sipped his juice. 'I'll take it as it comes, then. Since we're not saying the actual words tonight, you're my favourite student.' He ate a mouthful of ravioli, staring into the middle distance above Daniel's head as he chewed. 'Since the timeline is already in enough of a mess to have almost killed my son's favourite author-illustrator, and my position at the lab is under review and likely to end before the summer, shall we take our sexist rescue to the limit and get a date out of it?'

'What were you thinking?'

'Give Tove hope that she turns her life around. That she finds love, and her work has an impact beyond her wildest dreams.'

Daniel felt a stab of excitement at the thought of travelling with Lucas. 'You mean like that episode of Doctor Who, where the Doctor takes Vincent Van Gogh to an exhibition of his work in the twenty-first century?'

'Yeah. You know Helsinki Pride is sponsored by the Moomins company this year?'

Daniel couldn't help his fingers twitch against Lucas'. 'Yes. I knew that. Kinda why I chose Tove of all the children's writers from history. I figured she'd be the most likely to understand my feelings for you.'

'Want to give her hope for a positive future by showing her how far Helsinki's come since the 1950s before we take her home?'

Daniel grinned. 'I like that idea. As first dates go, taking Tove Jansson to her own Pride parade is pretty fucking epic.'

* * *

Time-space travel, Tove decided, felt jarring. It was approximately equivalent to being pumped full of naloxone to prevent death from an opium overdose. She squinted for a moment in the park, the sunlight feeling far too bright, the bird song too loud, the world far too overstimulating with its modern cars and bright midsummer blooms. The confident German with the perfect hair strode off towards the road as though walking through a portal from a laboratory into Katajanokka park was an everyday occurrence. He turned around.

'Come on, let's get this show on the road,' he said with his odd accent and colloquial word choice.

The dark haired man adjusted the baby carrier on his chest before touching her elbow. He raised his eyebrows and gestured that she should follow the young man as he walked towards the path, which had been paved since she was here last. She trudged after him, feeling glad of the rainbow gumboots they'd provided her with as protection against the mud, if still very unclear of what Pride was, this strange and ultra-modern festival of the rainbow. When their little party got to the edge of her favourite childhood play spot, the German turned around, pointing at the park's name signpost. Tove rolled her eyes.

'I know what Katajanokka park is called,' she said. 'I don't need a signpost to tell me what I already know.'

Daniel grinned. 'Humour me.'

Tove looked at the sign, feeling mildly surprised to find that it was trilingual. English definitely wasn't the city's lingua franca in her home time, but it would be consistent with the way everything seemed alien here, like the world had simultaneously stayed the same and been turned upside down in all the worst ways. Her German confessor had said the world took a weird turn in the 1970s, so maybe trilingual signs were normal here. It took a few moments to dawn on her that the park was no longer called Katajanokka, and, when it did, her eyes filled with tears. She stood rooted to the spot, overwhelmed by more feelings than she could put names to as her name glinted up at her in the summer sunshine. In three languages.

'They changed the name of the park,' she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

He put his arm around her, squeezing her into a side-hug. 'It's been Tove Jansson park since 2014. They re-named it in your honour for the hundredth anniversary of your birth.'

She wiped her cheeks quickly, hoping nobody nearby would notice she was crying. The man with the baby offered her a tissue from the pack in his pocket, which she accepted, feeling grateful despite herself. 'Now why would they do a thing like that for someone whose work had no impact, who was shunned, treated like shit for loving women?' she huffed as they led her past the cathedral towards Senate Square.

'No impact, huh?' Daniel said. 'Hold that thought.'

He interlaced his fingers with the handsome Brazilian as they walked a few paces in front of her. At least his interruption of her suicide had got results for him. Lucky bastard. Couldn't he just have left her to get what she wanted, instead of taking his chance to have what he wanted? 'Wait, we're in Helsinki and you're holding hands with a man in the street,' she said, pulling on Daniel's sleeve. 'In the weird turn the world takes, is homosexuality decriminalised?'

'Yes.' He grinned at her. 'Legalised in Finland in 1971, and you get queer marriage here in March, 2017.'

Sixteen more years. Sixteen years until she would finally have the legitimacy of holding a lover's hand in public. Sixteen years was a long time, but, on the other hand, knowing that the lunacy of hate had a deadline filled her heart with unbidden hope. She trotted to catch up with the two happy kids.

'He's your boss?' she said to Daniel, pointing to the other man.

'Yes. Lucas.'

Lucas waved at her when Daniel said his name. He pointed to the baby, and said, 'Leo.'

'He doesn't speak Swedish. How does he read my books to the baby?'

'Oh, they've been translated. In the nineties, some Japanese animators make a TV series of the Moomin stories, and they kinda went viral after that. Everyone wanted a translation.'

'Went viral?' Tove said, her mind conjuring images of people somehow infected with a disease that turned them into likenesses of her characters. It was a disturbing, if strangely pleasing, thought.

'The excitement spread from person to person very quickly, like a virus.'

'Oh.' It made sense, even though the wording was decidedly strange. She pointed to a nearby rainbow child. 'Where can I get one of these bags? I wear a wreath like that on my birthday every year. It would be nice to have a shopping bag with my wreath.'

Daniel said something to Lucas in English. Lucas dropped his hand, and he and Leo disappeared into the crowd. Daniel grinned at her.

'My boyfriend likes shopping.'

His enthusiasm was infectious, and Tove found herself returning his stupid smile. 'You work quickly. Boss to boyfriend in a week is better than my record.'

'It's thanks to you. If I hadn't brought you back to the lab, we would never have spoken about why I was doing crazy stunts, trying to impress him. I would never have stayed over at his house that night. We wouldn't have woohooed in his hot tub.'

'And he was impressed?'

'I did say we woohooed in the hot tub, right?'

'I don't know what it means to have woohooed.'

'It's complicated.' Daniel paused. 'But I'm having the most wholesome first official date I've ever had in my life, and it's going pretty well. So thank you.' He put his arm around Tove's shoulders and leaned into her in a way that made her feel oddly maternal. She patted his cheek.

Lucas reappeared. 'The bag is yours,' he said in very hesitant Swedish, holding out one of the wreath bags as he fell into step with her.

'Thank you.' She felt close to emotional overwhelm that the time-travelling rainbow children had accepted her as one of their own, and were giving her souvenirs to keep from her little holiday in the future. She squeezed his muscular arm and dabbed her eyes with the tissue from the park as they entered the square.

Daniel nudged her elbow. 'Look around you. None of this would have been possible if it weren't for your work.'

'What do you mean?'

'This event is sponsored by the Moomins company. The money your work created has paid for this celebration of our diverse, inclusive queerness. Your lifelong legacy of being an openly queer person helped change Finland's idea of who we were, what we were, what we could bring to society. You helped change the perception from queerness as a sickness that was a threat to children and society, to queer people as legitimate contributors to the world.' He paused to wipe tears out of his eyes. 'Your life story is one of the few from the history books that gave me hope that I could live a long and happy life with a committed partner, not end up dead or imprisoned. Please promise me that, when we return you to your time, you'll live that life, find your Tuulikki. That you'll keep on working, that you won't let the darkness pull you under.'

Tove pulled Daniel into a hug, giving up the pretence of stoicism. He held her, making soothing sounds as she cried out her loneliness, her hopelessness, the existential pointlessness that had driven her to manipulate both her doctor and her pharmacist with lies of terrible menstrual pain. She stood, surrounded by her siblings whose lives were that little bit more free because she had lived and loved in the public eye. Over a loudspeaker, someone announced that the Prime Minister would say a few words. As she spoke her beautiful words of inclusion and hope, Tove resolved that she would find her way back to herself, back to love, back to hope.

They walked with the parade, following the Moomin float. Tove felt glad of all the noise and bustle that prevented conversation. She couldn't have put words to what she saw, or how she felt, knowing that in her own small way, she'd contributed to the history of her nation. They washed their feelings down with a beer from a rainbow tin in the park, and the boys returned her to her apartment, to the moment Daniel had taken her. Feeling impulsive, she made them some coffee in the filter machine, sat Leo on her lap, and read her young fan to sleep. Tove felt warm inside, watching the two boys link fingers unselfconsciously as they listened to her read, seeing Daniel snuggle on Lucas' chest.

When they had left her flat to go back to their strange, overstimulating time, she returned the script to the pharmacist, along with the unopened extra bottle she'd manipulated out of him in case the first didn't work. She mumbled something about finding the mixture too strong to get any work done as she pushed it over the counter. The pharmacist seemed relieved to see her. He even asked if she'd like him to address an envelope for her while she was in the shop.

'Not today, thank you,' she said. She turned to leave, but something pulled her back. She looked him in the eye. 'From today, I think I'm not going to make friends with women who need me to hide my handwriting, my letters, who I am. I'm nobody's secret any more.'

He nodded. 'Indeed. It's a good choice for you, I think.' He gave her half a smile. 'Well, when you need cough syrup for two in the winter, you know where I am.' He retreated into the store room. She heard him humming as he walked between the racks of pills.

'Yes. For two.' She turned on her heel, and walked out into the sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> I think the drug laws in this fic are inaccurate but "Finnish drug laws 1950s" is a very unproductive search.
> 
> The AU based on the weird things Silicone Valley - where Lucas seems like he'd be right at home - do to stay ahead of their competition.
> 
> Obscure factlets that I couldn't figure out how to work into the backstory without it feeling clunky, but you might be interested in:  
\- The wreath bags were actually on sale during Helsinki's Pride week, with the design based on an illustration Tove did of her traditional birthday wreath in the 1970s, so it was kinda a reinforcing loop of the motif.  
\- One or two lovers before Tuulikki, Tove dated a woman whose husband was really suspicious and surveilling, and she had to get various local store owners to address the envelopes for her to stay undetected. The pharmacist is also trying to get her to walk back to love, fully knowing what her deal was. Tuulikki played hard to get out of paranoia around discovery, but could justify their correspondence as artist talk, so Tove never needed to ask various small business owners to address love letters for her again.


End file.
